We live in difficult times, cut off from friends and family. It often seems nearly impossible to comprehend returning to what we once thought normal. As such Chichester Festival Theatre ’s decision to salvage Crave – a bleak, difficult, dark piece by Sarah Kane – from their summer season and put it on in the main house, where normally it would jar becomes an apt and fitting choice. Kane was a bright light of the British theatre scene, threatening to burn it down and party in the ashes through her searingly difficult, resolutely honest plays before she took her own life. Amongst her small and often difficult works Crave stands out as an anomaly. Four disparate voices struggling for belonging, understanding… for love. There’s no subtext to ground them, no setting or character arc, the characters don’t even have names, just letters and genders. As such it’s been a widely interpreted piece, often with an array of added bells and whistles that add nothing. Here director Tinuke Craig ...
